The only things you actually need are a little curiosity and whatever’s growing in your backyard.
Welcome, baby witch. You’ve Googled “how to start witchcraft” approximately eleven times this week, you’ve been side-eyeing every herb at the grocery store, and someone in a Facebook group has already told you that you’re doing it wrong.
Breathe. You’re not.
Magic isn’t locked behind a $200 starter kit. It’s in your kitchen, your garden, at the beach, the phase of the moon tonight. Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I started.
✶ 1. Step outside before you do anything else.
Seriously — before you buy a single crystal or read a single grimoire, just go outside. Notice what’s growing. Notice the moon. Notice what the air smells like today.
Witchcraft is fundamentally a relationship with the natural world, and that relationship starts with paying attention. Free. No shipping required.
✶ 2. Your kitchen is already a witch’s cabinet.
Rosemary for protection and clarity. Cinnamon for warmth and abundance. Lavender for calm. Sage for cleansing. Bay leaves for wishes (write one on a leaf and burn it — I’m not kidding, it works). You almost certainly have magical herbs in your spice rack right now and just didn’t know it. Kitchen witchery is some of the oldest magic there is, and it asks nothing of you except intention.
Try this tonight: Stir your evening tea clockwise while thinking of something you want to draw into your life. Add honey with the intention of sweetness. That’s a spell. You just did a spell. You’re welcome.
✶ 3. Be open to a life of learning.
Don't try to learn everything at once. There is a lot to explore and if you try to dive into every topic headfirst, you will burn out and your magic will suffer. Pick a handful of things that really speak to you, and focus your learning on those - they will lead you to your own path which includes what's next and what's new and what's for you.
✶ 4. The moon is your free, always-available co-witch.
New moon: set intentions, plant seeds (literal or metaphorical), start new things. Waxing moon: build, grow, take action. Full moon: celebrate, charge your tools, do bigger magic, howl a little if the mood strikes. Waning moon: release, let go, rest. That’s really the whole framework. You can go much deeper, but those four phases will carry you a long way.
Moon habit: Step outside on the new and full moon, even just for two minutes. Look up, say what you want or what you’re releasing out loud. Simple. Consistent. Genuinely powerful.
✶ 5. Nature gives you a calendar for free.
The wheel of the year — the eight seasonal celebrations that many witches follow — isn’t arbitrary. It maps to what’s actually happening outside: the first signs of spring, the longest day, the harvest, the deepest dark. When you start paying attention to the seasons as energetic shifts, your practice gets rooted in something real and ancient. Look out the window. That’s your altar.
✶ 6. Keep a journal. It becomes your Book of Shadows.
Write down what you try. What herbs you worked with and what you felt. What the moon was doing. What seemed to work and what absolutely did not. Over time, this becomes your most valuable magical tool — a record of your own unique practice that no book could ever hand you. Nobody else’s Book of Shadows will look like yours, and that’s the whole point.
✶ 7. You are already as magical as any other witch.
Here’s the thing about witchcraft that no one tells you upfront: you don’t have to earn your way in. The herbs, the moon, the seasons, the soil — they’ve been waiting. That pull you feel toward all of this isn’t random. The magic has always been inside you. Your intuition has been whispering, you’re just finally learning to listen.
Now go check what phase the moon is in tonight. Then look at what’s growing closest to your front door. And realize, you’ve already started.
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